The idea that an employer will change their mind about taking someone on because the statutory redundancy consultation period has been reduced from 90 to 45 days is close to absurd.
Raymond Zilinskas, a former inspector, says Mr Blair's infamous 45-minute claim "now seems close to absurd".In fact, the only important finds thus far have been what the Americans say may be three mobile biological-weapons laboratories, two of which are said to correspond closely to the sort described by Mr Powell, on the basis of reports from defectors, in his seminal presentation to the UN.
In contrast with the soul-crushing, nausea-inducing feelings hearing Trump brag about sexual assault brought up for many women, hearing him call Clinton "such a nasty woman" felt closer to absurd.
The result, provoking more titters than thrills, comes perilously close to the absurd.
More vexing, though, is the thought that science fiction is so inherently close to the absurd that the toughest challenge is not to lampoon it — as movies like "Galaxy Quest" have done before, and as Mottola does here with his blatant gestures to "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and "E.T".
To many U.S. businesspeople, and to centrists in both parties, the concern that Mr. Obama's White House is too close to business sounds absurd.
"But for the first time I can honestly say that, while my admiration for the architect is close to reverence, this absurd addition must surely be the biggest mistake I have ever come across".
The actors have to walk a fine line between playing it straight while getting as close as possible to absurd.
But, he cannot abide the world seeing the likely disclosures in his returns: wealth not close to what he claims, debt, absurd deductions (anything remotely connected to enhancing the Trump name, possibly Melania's wedding gown), his hairdos, offshore tax havens, amnesty, unsavory business partners.
In the current crush of the absurd, they come dangerously close to blending into the background in the way that police sirens can become ambient noise in New York City.
The literary landscape of the 1950s and early '60s was thick with Southern writers, Roman Catholic writers, writers who dabbled in the gothic and the absurd, but none came close to the blend of grotesque comedy, moral seriousness and steel-trap intellectual rigor that courses through O'Connor's tales of wayward Southerners.
